Unblock Education (Score 1)

I've recently worked in the IT section of a large girl's school (K-12). Every girl from Year 5 to Year 12 is provided with a fully loaded Macbook.

Each machine has a comprehensive suite of productivity, creativity and connectivity tools. Every girl has administrator rights to their machine. There is monitoring but no blocking on the school network. Students are encouraged to adopt appropriate use - and this is seen as an educational issue - so counselling and mentoring replace punishment and punitive measures in the very few instances of inappropriate use.

If the girls do manage to corrupt their machine - we simply try to salvage data and then reimage the machine and return it to them. Compared to the 8 or so other schools where I've worked the instances of misuse in this environment are barely noticeable.

Blocking and witholding do nothing to promote appropriate behavioural choices. In fact it might be seen to be instigating poor behaviours - trying to circumvent factors that limit comprehensive use of computers seems a very natural response to me.

Give the students the opportunities to make choices - give them the chance to learn how to behave responsibly - do NOT pander to petty fear and paranoia... students can and will respect the openness and will generally work more effectively in such an environment - especially if the teachers and other school staff model the enthusiasm, productivity and creativity that the machines afford.

Prohibition will always see the rise of an underground economy in whatever commodities are witheld. DO we really want Elliot Ness wandering our schools?? I'd rather see Mr Holland, John Keats and other inspirational figures.